A growing chorus of pro-life voices is urging the Trump administration’s FDA to reinstate tighter restrictions on the abortion pill following a groundbreaking study highlighting its dangers.
That new study, released Monday by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), found that 10.93 percent of women suffer sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging or another serious complication within 45 days of taking mifepristone -- the first drug in the two-step abortion pill regimen. That rate is 22 times higher than the 0.5 percent cited by Danco, the manufacturer of the brand name Mifeprex.
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The abortion pill was first approved under the Clinton administration in 2000 with stronger regulations that were loosened under Presidents Obama and Biden.
Chemical abortions account for approximately 63 percent of all abortions in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute, a thinktank previously affiliated with Planned Parenthood. Some estimates are higher.
“We're calling on the Trump administration to reinstate the original safety protections,” said Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a co-author of the study. He made the remarks during a teleconference on Monday.
Although the Trump administration has delivered win after win for pro-life advocates, its stance on the abortion pill has caused concern among many advocates.
While Trump’s HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in his confirmation hearing that Trump had asked him to investigate the safety of mifepristone, last December, Trump told Time he would not use executive authority to ban the drug. Trump’s FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said last week that he has no plans to change existing policy to restrict access to mifepristone.
The new study from the EPPC analyzed insurance data from more than 865,000 mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023.
“When mifepristone was originally approved by the FDA, it required three in-person doctor visits -- a doctor visit when the pill was originally prescribed, a visit three days later when misoprostol would be prescribed to then start the contractions to expel the now-deceased baby, and then a visit two weeks later to make sure that nothing bad had taken place,” Anderson added.
The Obama administration lowered the number of required in-person visits to one. The Biden administration subsequently eliminated the need for in-person visits altogether, allowing the abortion pill to be prescribed via telehealth and delivered by mail.
The Trump administration pledged to “make America healthy again” and to “undo all of the bad things that Obama and Biden did,” Anderson said.
“If you're going to undo all of the bad and stupid things that the Obama and Biden administrations did, you should reinstate all the original safety protections for the pill,” Anderson said.
Anderson isn’t alone.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Monday sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary that cites the study and asserts, “the safety risks of the chemical abortion drug, mifepristone, are far greater than the FDA currently acknowledges.”
“You have stated publicly: ‘If the data suggests something or tells us that there’s a real signal, we can’t promise we’re not going to act on that data.’ The time to act is now,” Hawley wrote. “It is time to revisit and restore the FDA’s longstanding safety measures governing mifepristone.”
U.S. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) also called on FDA involvement.
“This recent study is proof that pro-abortion advocates care more about promoting their radical agenda than they do about women’s health,” Daines said. “I urge the FDA to reinstate safety protocols for mifepristone, so that we can protect the health of women and uphold the dignity of life.”
Christina Francis, a practicing OB-GYN and the CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, told Catholic News Agency that the new data represents a public health crisis.
“We cannot place abortion access above patient care and patient safety,” Francis said. “[This] should be something that all of us can agree on and come together on.”
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Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the pro-life community must pressure the FDA to take action.
“With the release of this kind of information, we need political action,” Mohler said on his podcast, The Briefing. “We need concerted political action. We need a remedy. We need pressure on the FDA, and the FDA needs a lot of pressure to force it to reconsider what this evidence indicates was a very ill-advised decision to lessen the restrictions on the abortion pill. … The numbers are going to have to be confronted. The FDA needs to answer for this.”
Jor-El Godsey, president of Heartbeat International, previously told Pregnancy Help News that the findings should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers.
“This groundbreaking study confirms what women and the pro-life community have long known: the abortion pill is not safe,” Godsey said. “Women deserve care, not careless risks disguised as healthcare. The FDA must act swiftly to reinstate commonsense safeguards for the abortion pill -- or reconsider its approval altogether. Women’s lives and health are far too valuable to be treated as acceptable casualties in the rush to expand chemical abortion.”
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
